In the ongoing Indian T20 League 2022, Faf du Plessis led a team for the first time in his Indian T20 League career. Ahead of the season, Du Plessis was appointed the captain of Bangalore as Virat Kohli had stepped down last year. The team has done well as they have reached Qualifier 2, which will be played against Rajasthan on May 27 in Ahmedabad.
Meanwhile, former cricketer Shane Watson felt that Bangalore were one of the favourites to lift the title even before the start of this edition. He reasoned that the team had a great auction, and the team was well balanced. Watson also pointed out that Du Plessis was a great buy for them as they needed a captain after Kohli stepped down. The former all-rounder praised Du Plessis saying that the latter knows how to get the best of Kohli.
“Even before this tournament started, RCB were one of my favourites because of how well they did in the auction and how well-balanced their squad they were able to put together was. Faf du Plessis, that was a great buy for them. Because knowing that Virat was going to step down, Faf was probably was one of the only few players I think was going to do a brilliant job to know how to get the best out of Virat as not the captain and sort of know-how to steer the franchise into the right direction,” Watson said on Grade Cricketer Podcast.
In the meanwhile, former Bangalore player added that Josh Hazlewood’s bowling in the T20s has gone up in the last 18 months. The two-time World Cup winner also pointed out that Harshal Patel has added value to the team and Dinesh Karthik has been outstanding. He also spoke about how brilliantly Karthik provided the finishing touches in the Eliminator game against Lucknow.
“Josh Hazlewood has shown that with CSK, and now his bowling the T20s has gone through the roof in the last 18 months. Harshal Patel has added value again, gosh he has just been brilliant in the last couple of years. And the one who has been the biggest standout has been Dinesh Karthik. The value he has added and he showed that last night (Wednesday against Lucknow Super Giants). To finish off innings like that, they could have stagnated a bit but he got 32 of 16 balls to really provide that extra little burst. He has done that just about every time he has batted for RCB,” Watson added.
